Let the sun never set on your business

The ‘follow-the-sun’ model of workflow allows teams in different time zones to pass the baton among them and continue the work. Does your business need it?

By Muraleedhar Ramapai

By its basic definition, FTS – follow-the-sun (or round-the-clock) – means that development or support literally follows the sun. It’s a type of global workflow in which issues are handled by and passed between offices in different time zones.

Principles of the FTS model are focused on increasing the response time for service handling and problem resolution. It also aims to reduce development and production durations, and time to market. The sites are spread across multiple time zones, allowing work to be handed off across locations. Besides, employees hand off work at the end of shift to the next site that may be based out across several time zones. Work is owned and worked on by one site at a time.

Industries whose products outdate vigorously (mobile handsets, firmware, e-commerce systems, supply chain management) rely more on the FTS model for development and support. Rather than adding manpower, paying for overtime, skipping process steps, or setting aggressive deadlines, such companies as part of their software development strategy, embrace FTS.

The central idea for the FTS approach is the hand-off. In traditional software development, global teams are less dependent on one another and work is not usually handed off. The FTS approach is based on the principle of handing off unfinished work to the next location at the end of the workday.

A pertinent theme for deploying the FTS model revolves around location selection. Increasing the number of sites in a daily cycle increased the working speed.

A pertinent theme for deploying the FTS model revolves around location selection. Research indicates that a routing model that supports geographical locations for FTS has to support ‘optimal time zone difference’ (biological feasibility) and ‘the natural ease of communication’ (that is, complementary culture, and language). Overall, it was found that increasing the number of sites in a daily cycle increased the working speed.

The decision to adopt the FTS model for driving value starts with few core questions.

• The complexity of development or support issues: Can the pressing challenges be addressed without staffing people on a 24-hour clock?
• The customer location. Is your business servicing or delivering not globally but regionally? If yes, then do you need the FTS model?
• What part of the day (or night) are you stretched the thinnest: If your customer analytics data points to peak times outside of your standard working hours, the FTS option can be explored.
• The extent of self-service and app usage. To what degree, have you leveraged mobile apps and options of customers’ self-service systems?
• Team size: what scale do you operate at? Increasing output and adding team members are trade-offs that have to be weighed based on the industry/product line, specific expected outcomes, and RoI best practices.

Successful implementation of the FTS model depends on a number of embedded infrastructure system and standards, for example, tools for estimating and planning schedules, sprint management, handoffs, and progress tracking, utilisation of code repositories, version control management system, tools for supporting data security and encryption, communication applications including screen sharing, and reports generation utilities for Scrum and Agile methodologies.

The challenges are associated with leadership (coordination, collaboration and accountability) and culture (language, communication, and training).

Going through case studies and field reports would highlight challenges and best practices in the implemented FTS models. The challenges are associated with the dual rubric of leadership and culture. The leadership aspect includes coordination, collaboration, and accountability, while the cultural aspect comprises language, communication, and training. The best practices are the adoption of agile methodology, the technology used for sharing and handoffs, and process documentation.

Ramapai is Executive Director, Maveric Systems